


That Which Isn't Broken, Do Not Fix

by entanglednow



Series: Footsteps [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The continuing adventures of Donna, Dalek Caan, and Jenny in space (and also sometimes time.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Isn't Broken, Do Not Fix

  
The ship mostly travelled in space. It was too easy to get tangled up in time, easy to get lost. The whole great weight of it was like a supernova going off behind Donna's eyes.

If she really looked at the whole of it, the great tangled nasty web of it for too long, she was half afraid she'd break, _properly_ break, right down the middle. Just like the Doctor promised she would.

But then that proved he didn't know everything. Besides, the less time travel they did the less chance that they'd meet him coming the other way. Oh, she knew how his mind worked, and it was best for everyone. This was her deciding, not him, Donna Noble knew how to play that card without forgetting what it meant to be speck in someone else's universe.

Of course it was being a speck that had brought her here.

To a floating city six miles above the planet's surface. Which she was currently trying to keep six miles up. Against its current desire to go smashing into the landscape at a rate of bloody knots.

It was a mess of systems, all outdated, mostly made up of patches and shoddily maintained parts.

Donna was currently working miracles with her human fingers and her broken half Time Lord brain.

But then, she had help.

"My brain seems to think this is unsalvageable."

"Your brain is correct, clever brain, like a nightingale," Dalek Caan provided as he trundled past with a magnetic rig wobbling on the front of his shell.

"Oi, Jenny Wren, get over here!"

Jenny came down on one knee beside her a moment later. All smiles and enthusiasm. Ready to save the world at a moment's notice.

"Hold that."

Jenny obediently held the magnetic coil in position while Donna tried to find the right setting.

"If I knew what I was doing I could be more useful," Jenny reminded her, and not for the first time.

"I've told you before, I can't teach you about science and space because I don't have a clue what I'm doing half the time."

"Well, the other half of the time? The time when things do make sense. My brain can handle it. It's kind of genetically programmed for vast amounts of data storage isn't it?"

"Ask Caan," she tried, because crazy or not he knew pretty much everything. Which, when she thought about it, was probably the reason he was crazy in the first place.

"He's insane," Jenny said, like the observation might have passed Donna by.

"He knows science," Donna countered.

"Insane science," Jenny protested unhappily. "Which I can't understand half the time."

"Trust me, it's all pretty much the same thing- there, done, let go!"

Jenny did as she was told immediately. There was a fine thread of obedience in the girl that ran too bloody deep for Donna's liking. But damned if she didn't look happy. There was a smear of oil on her cheek and she was grinning triumphantly like they'd just bravely defeated the electronics in battle.

The girl could smile for England. Sod it, the girl could smile for _Earth._

At least she changed her clothes more often than her dad. Even if she did tend to choose what to wear by judging how many aliens she'd have to beat up. Clearly she'd judged the alien threat to be mauve today, because she was wearing her rucksack. Donna was horribly curious what she put in that thing, but she figured Jenny was somewhere around her awkward Time Lord teenage years so Donna let her have her secrets.

She pulled the control panel over onto her lap, Jenny leant over her shoulder, making sure not to block out the light, and watched her take it apart.

"I don't know what these people were thinking, cobbling together a bunch of spare parts and never once replacing or upgrading the old systems. What did they eventually think was going to happen. No wonder they're in such a bloody mess. There isn't half a-" Donna reached one of the strange holes in her memory and stared down at the complicated mess she'd made of the system with a mixture of frustration and annoyance.

"Light is forced to flee, flee in the face of darkness," Caan provided helpfully.

"Yes, right, thank you," she cut power in the bright leads and transferred it, then reconnected both halves. The controls obediently started to thrum again. "Nice piece of work if I do say so myself."

"Miraculous!" Caan agreed.

Donna swore she could hear Jenny grinning somewhere behind her left ear.

Which left only the air filtration system, no point fixing a floating city only to leave it rapidly run out of breathable air.

She stood up and brushed dirt off of her knees.

Caan was clearly having a moment, trying to reach the controls with all the mighty powers of his Dalek mind. Unfortunately his Dalek shell was making very unflattering clonking noises where it kept striking the bottom of the console.

Jenny stuck a boot out, without really looking, and shunted him over the little lip.

"Telekinesis, reactionary to my whims," he trilled in amusement while he worked. Jenny huffed at him.

Donna met him there and glared at the tragic mess of it. She very carefully started to unpick the different systems from each other, making unhappy noises, and irritated noises, and occasionally disgusted noises.

Dalek Caan seemed to come to the same conclusion.

"Broken, most definitely, possibly without hope of repair, perhaps consigned to oblivion."

"Pessimist," Donna complained around what passed for a screwdriver on this tentacle obsessed planet.

"Donna will fix it," Jenny decided, with equal amounts enthusiasm and faith. Donna had no idea why.

"Doctor Donna finds holes and repairs them," Caan agreed.

"I can hear you both you know," Donna grumbled.

"Auditory hallucination, space dementia," Caan told her, which made Jenny laugh.

Sparks flew out of the thing, possibly on purpose.

Donna huffed irritation, she was damned if she was letting some backwoods collection of filtration dynamos get the best of her.

Twenty seven minutes later every single one of the little bastards whirred into action.

A quiet rustling-dragging noise told Donna that the Prime Minister had wobbled his way back down the corridor toward them.

The alien part of her brain found his species fascinating, and strangely pretty. The Donna part thought he looked like a bird that'd swallowed an octopus, completely unsuccessfully at that. She had to keep checking to make sure he hadn't slipped a cheeky tentacle into her pocket.

You couldn't trust a bloke with tentacles.

Her brain told her that was racist and exclusionary.

She told it to shut up.

"I've done my best, your city's pretty much up to spec again. I say pretty much, there's only so much I can do about the general decline of the parts. But you're no longer in any danger of falling out of the sky."

"~Overwhelming gratitude~ We are most grateful, most, for your skilled and astonishingly speedy repairs." The Minister bowed in a strange tentacle-laden sort of way that made him look like he was falling over slowly.

"You want to take better care of them you know," Donna said smartly. "Don't let your giant floating city get into this state again."

"~Terrible shame~ Of course, of course, we will not let our systems deteriorate again. ~Regret, resolve~ Many thanks for your aid. Your unexpected skills were miraculous ~surprise, gratitude~."

"You're welcome, can't very well leave everyone we meet to go smashing into a planet's surface can we," she said. Which was only sensible, though she'd enjoyed the great amount of tutting and ' _what were you thinking_ ' at their inability to plan for the future.

"~Humble gratitude~ Our people no longer fear the Great Fall." More of the falling over bowing was done in her general direction.

"But you have to keep an eye on your maintenance. Maybe even update your systems," Donna warned. It was unlikely that they'd be back in a thousand years to do repairs again.

"We agree, we have been lax for too long, this will change."

"Good, I'm glad to hear it."

"~Gratitude~ Please, take any spares and goods you require, for your services."

"Thank you," Jenny piped up before Donna could. At least she was using her smiling powers on someone else for a change.

The minister wobbled his way off again, tentacles moving in a way Donna suspected she'd probably understand the nuances of if she concentrated. But the floating city was, once again, floating and she was all concentrated out.

"Talking to them makes my brain hurt," Donna admitted. "The way they project their emotions on you," she shuddered. "I know it's handy and everything, no misunderstandings, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm being touched slightly inappropriately."

They made their way back to the ship.

Jenny had balanced their box of supplies on Dalek Caan and he was complaining that he wasn't a shopping trolley. Only in a longer and more poetic sort of way.

Their ship was actually four ships cobbled together. Though Donna liked to think she'd picked the best of each, and Caan had approved.

The main control room may have looked, ever so slightly, like a Tardis. Donna liked to think of that as some sort of sub-conscious homesickness on the part of the clever part of her brain. But she didn't mind that so much.

It felt human.

Of course, she didn't tell it as much. It would probably be insulted.

She made tea, as well as the technologically advanced refreshment system would allow, and pulled the metal tin down from the top shelf. She found if frustratingly empty.

"Where are all the hob nobs?"

"The Wren has devoured them all," Caan accused. He wobbled a little tentacle in Jenny's direction.

"I did not!"

Donna proffered the empty tin and shook it.

"Oh alright, maybe I did," Jenny said reluctantly.

Donna retrieved the bourbons from the top shelf with a sigh of resignation, opened the packet and dumped them inside.

"Well I suppose you deserved them," she said begrudgingly.

Donna gave Caan a cup of lukewarm tea to put his tentacles in. He made happy noises.

Jenny, thankfully, decided on the more traditional method of drinking hers.

"I still feel like I'm failing to learn important things about the universe," Jenny told her over a bourbon.

Donna sighed. "It's not like I went to Time Lord school myself."

"I know," Jenny told her and fidgeted. Donna was fairly sure she'd taught her that. Wondered whether she should be pleased or horrified about having _influences_ on the girl when she wasn't looking. "I know it's just, I like learning things, I'm good at it.

"I don't think I'm very good at teaching," Donna admitted, honest, if unhappy about it. "I'd probably muck it up. Not even like the knowledge in my head's really mine after all." Sometimes she felt like it just got lost there, misplaced like a newspaper left on a train.

"I think it was left in exactly the right place," Jenny said, voice as serious as Donna had ever heard it.

Donna covered the _moment_ she was having by dipping another bourbon in her tea.

"Alright, the next scrapheap of a planet we come to that needs some shoddy machinery rewired I'll put you to work on the bits that don't make my brain hurt."

Jenny grinned at her so hard it was a wonder she didn't split in two.

Donna stuck one of the bourbons in her mouth whole, sad substitute for a hob nob that it was.

"Unconventional minds one and all, and yet perfect, perfect in reverse," Caan trilled happily.

"Yeah, we love you too, you crazy squid," Donna told him around a mouthful of biscuit.  



End file.
